Baxter developed a new, bad habit this past Christmas. He started eating the artificial tree. I don’t know why he developed this practice. As a kitten, he would climb up the inside of the tree and pretend that he was part of the decorations. As a young cat, he would chew at low hanging ornaments and bat them about as an extension of his toy collection. But, until now, he had never set to eating the nemesis that invaded his living room. He chomped on the branches and chewed the green filaments that simulated pine needles. Of course, his digestive system did not take kindly to the invasion of these foreign bodies, and it would reject them without hesitation as soon as they started down the digestive track. I was left with the results—slimy filaments in puddles on the floor. Hardly a way to send Christmas greetings!
Why did Baxter do this? I can only guess, but he must have found something in the artificial tree that satisfied him and made him feel full and content—that is, until his stomach felt differently. He was attracted to the lights and ornaments, and he found all that chewing strangely pleasurable that’s the touch of canine in him. There certainly wasn’t any nutritional value to the morsels he swallowed, and I hope that the short time he consumed them left no toxic residue in his system. Still, I couldn’t convince him to stop the practice. If I raised my voice when he was grabbing a mouthful, he would stop and walk away, only to return when he thought I wasn’t looking. Whatever he got from chewing these artificial limbs addicted him to the practice. The only way it ended was when the tree was packed away for the season. No more opportunities were available for cheap pleasure from forbidden, fake vegetation.
We do the same thing sometimes, don’t we. We get addicted to certain objects that we hook onto for our pleasure and satisfaction. Maybe it’s another person, or shopping for the perfect whatever, or a dream job, or drugs, alcohol or gambling. Whatever we set out to consume we won’t stop until we have it. Then we feel proud and satisfied. We got what we were looking for, and we want everyone to know it. We entice others to share in our delight. We think we are cool and happy now, but then it begins to unravel. The person we thought was our perfect match starts irritating us. The new whatever we bought breaks, gets torn or stained, becomes out of date, or no longer interests us. The job we loved becomes drudgery, and our boss is a tyrant. And drugs, alcohol or gambling soon take us down a dead-end path to self-destruction and ruin. What happened?
These creaturely pleasures we craved are all artificial. They can’t truly give us authentic happiness. They can provide a moment’s satisfaction, but then the moment passes, and we can’t find lasting nourishment from what we have fed ourselves. We need to look for something else.
Our life-long task is to purify our desires to want the right thing, the lasting thing, the thing that will nourish our heart and mind and build our strength of character. That is God, the divine mystery, whose Spirit is incarnate in our lives but never exhausted by any particular creaturely manifestation. We crave God, but we settle for lesser pleasures that never satisfy. We need to recognize what we are all looking for and allow the tradition of our Christian faith to lead us in finding it. The scriptures, the sacraments, the lives of the saints, the doctrinal and moral teachings of our church are all meant to point to the God of Jesus Christ. Without this object of our desire, these elements of our religion are but empty words and gestures. However, if we understand how they lead us to seek the Lord in all things, then they become the vehicles of grace for anyone who would hear and follow.
The real reason Baxter ate the artificial tree branches was that his diet made him hungry. Since his master restricted the quantity of his food, he turned to what he thought would satisfy him. It didn’t work. Artificial food will never satisfy any living creature. Our Master offers us good and true nourishment in abundance from the bounty of His grace. Eat up; be satisfied; then come back for more. There’s plenty for all.
